Feral Curse

by Cynthia Leitich Smith

  We slow so as not to catch up to the gathering crowd of mourners too quickly, and she says, “When the Stubblefield sisters found . . .”

  She doesn’t want to say “the body.” That’s okay. I don’t want to hear her say it, either.

  Lowering her voice, Jess starts again. “When they found Ben, he’d laid out a pack of matches, a white votive candle, your junior class photo, a dried-up wrist corsage, and an excerpt from a”— she uses her fingers to make air quotes —“‘lost companion book to Revelations.’ At least that’s what it’s labeled — it doesn’t read like the King James or any other version of the Bible to me. If you want . . .” She hesitates. “I can e-mail you a copy of it.”

  “You would do that?” I exclaim, too loudly.

  At her solemn nod, a few of our classmates turn in unison from the park’s picnic area. Spotting me, they clasp one another as if I’m a ghost. I’ve been getting that reaction a lot since Ben died, as though I’m his widow instead of his girlfriend. Or ex-girlfriend, to be precise.

  God, I don’t need this right now, but it would’ve stirred more talk if I hadn’t shown.

  Five pretty, misty-eyed girls in crisp black dresses rush toward us, all open arms and consoling words. Did I resent them only moments ago? I take it back.

  We are each other’s touchstones. Together, we’ve laid to rest beloved grandparents and pets ranging from goldfish to llamas, but, for a member of our own generation, for one of us, this is the first death. Ben is the first death. It still doesn’t seem possible.

  I can smell their sorrow and exhaustion. Samantha was his first kiss. Lauren was the first girl he got to second base with (I heard it from her, not him, in the church ladies’ restroom — two years before he and I ever dated). Shelby was his lab partner in biology, chemistry, and physics — his best friend who was a girl (as opposed to his girlfriend). She was the one who deciphered me for him (and vice versa), who made sure he didn’t do anything stupid.

  Ben was theirs in a myriad of ways. We all loved him.

  “What’s that?” I ask, gesturing at Brittney’s clipboard.

  As we approach the carousel, she explains, “We’re here representing Bloom Forever.

  “This is a petition demanding that the carousel be removed from the park as an attractive nuisance.”

  Brittney’s smart. She’s been accepted at Rice University. But that language came from her mother, one of our town’s four lawyers. Brittney adds, “We believe it would be disrespectful to Ben’s memory for it to continue being used for amusement purposes.”

  Amusement purposes? I accept the offered ball-point pen and scribble my name, but, however disloyal to Ben it might sound, I hate the thought of losing the antique carousel. I love the whimsy of it, the fact that it has a history of its own.

  People are determined to do something concrete in response to Ben’s death. I get that; I do. But why blame an inanimate object? It’s utterly irrational.

  Especially since I’m the one at fault.

  Then again, I’ve always felt a certain kinship to the antique ride, a personal link, and there’s no rational explanation for that, either.

  Beyond the picnic tables and barbecue grills, the carousel itself is turned off, no lights, no robotic organ music, no rotation, though the mirrored panels at the base reflect the same sort of lavender-peach Texas sunset as on Valentine’s Day. There are no brightly ornamented, prissy fiberglass horses, either. Instead, it’s Western themed, trimmed in a mustard yellow and adorned with wooden figures in the shapes of cougars, deer, snakes, black bears, hares, coyotes, buffaloes, elk, wolves, bighorn sheep, hogs, raccoons, armadillos, otters, and robust brown-and-white paint ponies, positioned as if pulling a rustic wagon — two of each animal, like refugees from Noah’s ark, each figure big enough for a grown man to ride, including the two cat figures, carved as if they’re running. Running in endless circles.

  As the mayor’s daughter, I know the ride was appraised and insured at over $750,000.

  Last summer Pine Ridge bought the carousel off a traveling carnival as part of the city council’s eco-devo plan to lure in more weekend tourists from Austin and Houston.

  If we’d had any sort of traditional town square or central park, it might’ve been installed there. But Pine Ridge grew from the river, and our gathering place is here, along the water.

  I feel drawn to the carousel, as if I’m sleepwalking. Meanwhile, Brittney takes away the clipboard and pen. Someone presses a thin white candle into my hand. Someone else lights it.

  Giant photos of Ben have been positioned artfully on either side of the ride: Ben suited up as quarterback. Ben in his baseball uniform. Ben as Jesus in last year’s Easter play. And worst of all, Ben photoshopped to appear in cap and gown. A peek at the future he’ll never have. We’ll never have together. It seems blasphemous somehow.

  As if from a distance, I hear Jess whispering, “Shock. Kayla’s in shock.”

  She’s defending the weirdness that is me.

  Later, Jess sends me a scanned-in copy of the so-called “lost companion book to Revelations.” No message except “XO,” which is how she signs off all her e-mails and texts. I’m not sure why she’s risking pissing off her dad by passing it on to me (I’m pretty sure it’s considered evidence or at least police business), but I’m profoundly grateful for any insights as to what was going through Ben’s head. Unanswered questions always frustrate me, but the ones swirling around his death are pure torture.

  I hit PRINT, copy and paste a few sentences into a search engine, and the text pulls up on the Web, on sale for $3.99. It’s labeled a ritual, a supposed “cure” for shifters. A spell.

  The ingredients were at the scene of his death: a flame, an image of my human form (via my class photo), a stand-in of my Cat form (via a cougar figure on the carousel), and something that was mine but connected us — my red rose wrist corsage from Homecoming.

  It’s not hard to figure out how he got ahold of it. I hung the dried flowers from the elastic wrist band on the inside door of my locker at school. Ben had the combination, and the doors near the high-school gym would’ve been unlocked for yesterday’s varsity baseball practice.

  That such a devout boy resorted to sorcery proves how desperate he was to save me.

  I realize now that I should’ve handled the whole thing differently. I should’ve brought up the subject of shifters long before what was supposed to have been our big night. I should’ve talked to him as if I wasn’t talking about myself, my species.

  I knew Ben. I understood how his mind worked. Or at least I thought I did. If anyone could’ve convinced him to see me as natural, beautiful, his Kayla, it would’ve been me.

  Not every religion considers me an abomination. Even within the various branches of Protestantism, it varies church by church, preacher by preacher. I could’ve drawn support from that. Ben’s faith wasn’t blind. When interpretations conflicted, he asked hard questions.

  We both studied Leviticus, but neither of us believed that God hates shrimp.

  Over the holidays, I watched a Web film, a documentary about a family named Cunningham, who’re Nuralagus rex sapiens living openly in a quaint lakeside town called Windermere in England. I loved how they were depicted as everyday, otherwise normal people and how their surrounding human community totally embraced them, hoppy feet and all.

  Maybe if I had shown that to Ben, we could’ve talked about it and . . .

  Then again, I’m not from a species of giant wererabbits.

  I’m a werecarnivore, a werepredator.

  Big Cats are scarier than big Bunnies.

  As I move the cursor to log off, I notice a link to the National Council for Preserving Humanity, and I can’t resist clicking to see what the haters are up to now.

  Skimming, I can tell that they’re getting bolder, more ambitious — targeting city and county commission seats, school boards, and state legislatures. It’s a smart, insidious strategy. I’ve heard Dad talk countless times abo
ut the power of grassroots politics.

  Over half the country considers the NCPH a bunch of crackpot alarmists, conspiracy theorists. But they’ve got a growing membership and heavyweight financial backing.

  Besides, there’s nothing the mainstream media likes more than to paint shifters as bogeymen. One of the NCPH spokespeople appears on some twenty-four-hour news station or another every other night, and they’re not alone in their bigotry. Only last week, the History Channel aired a program claiming that Nostradamus foretold of a shifter in the desert who’d bring on the apocalypse.

  As I skim the NCPH political blog, Peso scrambles onto my platform bed to snuggle. I pull him onto my lap, comforted by the puppy love. Other dogs are instinctively wary of me, which makes sense, given that they can scent out what I am. But I hand-raised Peso. He associates Cat with safety and love.

  The latest NCPH post discusses proposed legislation that would require door-to-door mass testing to confirm Homo sapiens status. Among other things, positive results could lead to tattooed IDs, rescinding driver’s and gun licenses, the firing of teachers and clergy, and the “cleansing” of the public schools. There’s a lot of talk about “protecting our children.”

  The most vicious comments argue for genocide and justify it as self-defense.

  But the hardest part is that even my enemies know more about what I am than I do.

  I’ve caught wind of another Cat on my parents’ undeveloped property across the river, but I’ve never seen her, never once talked to a single other shifter about, well, anything.

  White Plains, New York — The mauled body of Jacinda Finch, age 4, was found March 1 in a wooded area of Westchester County, New York, following a five-day search.

  Jacinda was the only child of Catchup founder and CEO Reginald Finch and his ex-wife, Chloe Finch-Bjorkman of White Plains and Palo Alto, Calif.

  A White Plains City Police spokesperson would say only that Jacinda appeared to have been the victim of a wild animal or shape-shifter attack.

  “IF SOME HOT YOUNG TART waltzes in, you’d best keep your pants on,” Grams warns. “I know how it is with you and your degenerate animal passions.”

  Grams is huge on shifter pride, except when it comes to my animal passions.

  Polishing the glass jewelry case, I make a noncommittal noise.

  A couple of months ago, my grandmother moved to Texas from Butler County, Kansas, and bought out the previous owners of Austin Antiques. A giant, freestanding, manila-colored brick rectangle in the middle of a strip-mall parking lot wouldn’t have been her first choice, but it was a well-established business at this location and for sale. She kept the blah name and set up her psychotically overpruned, overpriced bonsais on a shelf beneath the three gold-framed, beveled mirrors on the wall behind the front counter.

  Since then, we’ve attracted exactly five customers under the age of thirty — one tween-age comic collector, one cute Latina bride seeking a vintage “hair bob,” a gay couple who selected an Italian Florentine tray, and a straight couple who bought a 1920s Arts and Crafts desk, stripped of its unfortunate lemon-yellow paint job. Long story short, we’re painfully low on hot young tarts.

  Don’t get me wrong. I fully understand where Grams is coming from. Until a few months ago, when I lived with her on our Kansas farm, I was infamous for my tomcatting ways. A heartbreaking, lovemaking wonder stud with irresistibly touchable black hair.

  Not so much lately. Well, the hair is still there. But I’ve been nursing . . . not a broken heart, exactly . . . more like a cracked one. Yeah, that’s it, a hairline fracture of the heart.

  “And don’t burn the place down, either,” Grams scolds, checking the cash drawer one last time. Memo to self: Never share travel stories with your grandmother.

  She strolls out from behind a glass counter filled with lace gloves, cameo necklaces, and polished gold pocket watches. “The ladies are hunting for state-souvenir thimbles.” Gesturing at the customers toward the back of the store, Grams whispers, “Delilah is apparently collecting.”

  More penny-ante stuff. Last week they were after blue glass bottles.

  Grams adds, “Melly is armed with a new price guide. Jolene has pictures of her pudgy bulldog in a hot-pink tutu, and it’s as ugly as sin.”

  Me and Grams do have a few things in common. For one, we’re not dog people.

  “How ’bout the new dealer?” I ask. When I strolled in after school, a big guy with a big beer belly and a big belt buckle was staging a booth toward the back.

  “Just left,” Grams declares with her hands on the front-door push-bar. “You should go familiarize yourself with whatever treasures he’s offering.”

  “Treasures” my sweet Cat booty.

  Repressing a sigh, I say, “Fine, I’ll check out the booth and flirt with the old ladies.”

  Anything beats doing pre-calc homework, especially on a Friday night, and, after all, this is a family business. God help me, I’ll probably inherit it someday.

  “See that you do.” With that, Grams cuts out to meet her much-preferred grandchild, my big sister, Ruby, along with Ruby’s girlfriend, Erika, at a seafood joint on Lake Austin.

  Ruby has invited me to move in with her, but she and Erika are in love, three’s a crowd, and Grams and I do a pretty good job of staying out of each other’s way. Most of the time.

  Working every day after school and on weekends sucks, but there’s a HELP WANTED sign in the window. I’m hopeful of eventually getting back some semblance of a life.

  I weave through the maze of booths to number 66.

  This isn’t a bad antiques mall, if you’re into that sort of thing — roomy with crappy fluorescent lighting and cracked manila-colored tile floors. We offer purple acai iced green tea in hot weather and likewise-flavored hot tea in cold (not that it ever gets really cold). When Grams is feeling generous, she serves complimentary bowls of miso soup, too. The customers always mention all that in our online reviews.

  As for the inventory, dealers are showcasing some pop-culture doodads, like vintage Barbie dolls, Princess Diana memorial plates, and Knight Rider lunch boxes. Then there are the scads of Hummel figurines and other assorted dust collectors.

  The majority of the big-ticket items are furniture pieces, dining-room tables and armoires mostly, along with desks, vanities, buffets, and wobbly brass pole lamps. Jewelry, of course, costume and semiprecious. The rhinestone tiaras move well. Dealer 48 has some groovy sixties stuff like lava lamps and fringed suede jackets.

  From two rows over, I hear a singsong voice, “Delilah, do you see what I see?”

  “Sure do!” she replies with a sigh. “It’s Texas.”

  Oh, joy. State-souvenir thimbles.

  Deciding to schmooze them later, I focus on the newly set-up booth in front of me.

  Yowza. I’ve seen my share of “antiques” over the years — reproductions, fakes, and the real deal — so trust me when I say the new display at aisle 6, booth 6, is not standard fare.

  Let’s start with the two stuffed, mounted water-buffalo heads. I’m surprised the booth walls can support their weight. I’ve seen them, water buffaloes, on Animal Planet or whatever, and I’m still astonished by how freaking huge they are in real life. Or their heads are, at least.

  Then I glance at the curvy blond mannequin in a fire-engine-red dress, labeled a “tank dress” that the tag claims was once worn by Marilyn Monroe. It’s a sexy, ambitious lie.

  I begin checking all the tags.

  It’s easier to hand-sell something with a story — like “made of genuine snakeskin leather from a rattler shot dead by Sam Houston.” Or “carved by three blind Aggies, all named Bubba.” Or “sported on LBJ’s lapel.” (When Grams owned a store in Kansas, the claims were more generic, except when it came to The Wizard of Oz paraphernalia, but Texans love anything Texas related. No, really, they’re obsessed.)

  Anyway, customers — make that collectors — groove on a tale to tell, so successful dealers pitch them, and when the
y’re not around, they expect us, as landlords, to do the same.

  I run my fingers over a mounted swag of green shag carpeting, supposedly left over from the roll that covers a ceiling in Graceland.

  Moving to the back corner, I see there’s a six-foot-tall, surprisingly tasteful shoji screen, painted in cherry blossoms. I push it back to reveal a carousel . . . cat?

  A large, hand-carved wooden cat, wearing a leather Western saddle, with an upright pole stuck through it where the thick neck meets the broad back. It’s large enough for a man to ride and depicted in a sprinting position. The eyes are yellow-green, like my sister’s.

  From the get-go, I’m kind of fascinated by the thing. I am, after all, a Puma concolor sapiens, and we shifters tend to feel a strong natural affinity to anything reminiscent of our animal forms. After so many generations in hiding, we like to see ourselves reflected in the world. It’s one of the many reasons I drive a classic Mercury Cougar.

  The tag claims the carousel figure is cursed — a minus in conservative Houston but a mega plus in funky Austin — and goes on to say a teenage boy died on the carousel in an electrical storm and that the ride was broken up and sold off in pieces.

  It’s not total BS this time. I heard something about that, the guy’s death, a couple of months ago on the local TV news. He was a high-school football star, and people take football damn seriously around here. If I’m remembering right, it went down in some nothing small town an hour or so outside of Austin.

  A shame — what happened to him and, for that matter, to the carousel. If the rest of the ride was in as good condition as this cat figure, it would’ve been something to see.

  I rest my palm on the pole, inspecting the other side for chipped paint or other damage.

  Looks fine. Underpriced, though. The dealer should be able to get —

  White-hot energy seeps into my hand. I gasp, wincing, as it travels up my arm, snakes across my shoulders, and, in a blinding flash, consumes my entire body.